Offshore wind farm impressed the visitors

17.10.2011 | news

The Business and Industry Committee and the Statkraft board on their way to Sheringham Shoal. From left: Rigmor Andersen Eide (Standing Comittee…

The Norwegian Parliament’s Standing Committee on Business and Industry recently visited the Statkraft and Statoil offshore wind farm off the coast of Britain, and they were very impressed with Statkraft’s first investment in offshore wind power.

The Sheringham Shoal Offshore Wind Farm is being built off the coast of Norfolk in England. When completed, it will consist of 88 offshore wind turbines which together will supply 200,000 British homes with electricity. On Wednesday, 12 October, the Business and Industry Committee were able to see the wind farm for themselves in the company of the Statkraft board and several members of the group management.

The Norwegian parliamentarians were very pleased with their trip to the offshore wind farm.

“Last week’s visit to Statkraft at the Sheringham Shoal Offshore Wind Farm was no doubt the high point of our Committee’s UK visit. The main topic for the Committee’s visit was energy issues and Norway’s role with regard to renewable energy. Wind energy is as the very core of this. When the Committee was taken by boat to the Sheringham Shoal facility they realised the enormous scale of this project, the technical challenges it entails and the logistical problems that need to be solved,” said Svein Flåtten, first vice chair of the Business and Industry Committee.

“The Committee was impressed and not a little proud, I think, to see that Statkraft is demonstrating, even outside our own country, what technical and organisational resources the company possesses. Our meetings with government ministries and politicians in the UK also confirmed the impression that British authorities have a great deal of respect for Norway and the Norwegian companies that are active within energy supply in the UK, and not least that the agreed framework conditions are unchanged,” Flåtten said. President and CEO Christian Rynning-Tønnesen was also very happy with the trip.

“This is first class engineering, and it is both important and inspiring to bring the board and the Business and Industry Committee here to show them this innovative project.”

The visitors were able to see that all the foundations in the offshore wind farm are now in place, and the first wind turbines have already begun generating electricity for the British market.

Read more about the offshore wind farm on the project’s own website (www.scira.co.uk)